Perry Baker missing as veteran returns to lead USA SVNS
Ben Pinkelman has been handed the captaincy of the USA Eagles as they launch their HBSC SVNS campaign in Dubai, but they will be operating without veteran speedster Perry Baker who has been rested after helping clinch qualification for the 2024 Olympic Games in France.
The Eagles are in the same pool in Dubai as double Olympic champions Fiji, Great Britain and France and head coach Mike Friday is looking forward to the new 12 team format for the competition having seen his team earn their Olympic place at the RAN Sevens Qualifier in Langford, British Columbia.
Baker, who is third in the all time sevens try scoring charts with 263, is 37-years-old but remains a key figure in the squad and is set to feature later in the competition.
Friday said: “We are very much looking forward to the challenge of this new 12 team format, which will not only be even more insanely competitive and unforgiving but in this Olympic season and with global rugby stars like Antoine Dupont gracing the pitch, the excitement and competition will be at an all time high.
“We very much have an exciting young squad of players bookended by the returning veteran players of Ben Pinkelman and Madison Hughes, who will make their return after two and half years.
“We are under no illusion of the task that lies ahead in Dubai and Cape Town, and we have to give these young men the support and confidence to attack the challenge. With the power and speed we possess, if we can control our possession and we certainly have the capability to compete and beat any team.
"Minimizing unforced errors will be important as these young men find their way and a robust work ethic and resilience to stay in every battle.”
Madison Hughes returns to the USA lineup and is targeting a third Olympics having taken a break from Eagles representation after the 2020 Olympics. Ben Broselle also returns following an injury sustained last January that sidelined him for the rest of the year.
With the USA having failed to qualify for this year’s Rugby World Cup in France, it falls to Friday’s sevens squad to restore the Eagles rugby reputation on the world stage.
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I find these articles so very interesting, giving a much more in depth series of insights than one can ever gain from “desktop” research. It is very significant that it is this English man that Joe Schmidt has turned to build the basement stability and reliability from the WB forwards that was so shredded during the Jones debacle. With his long period in Ireland, with both Leinster and Ireland, Schmidt will know Geoff Parling’s qualities as a player well, and he will have gone over, with a fine tooth comb, the mans time in Australia. This, one feels, will prove to be a shrewd decision. I’m particularly interested in Parling’s comments about the lineout, especially the differences in approach between the hemispheres. He talks about the impact of weather conditions on the type of lineout tactics employed. He is the right man to have preparing for a wet and windy game at Eden Park, the “Cake Tin”, or in Christchuch, or for that matter in Capetown. I must confess to being surprised by this comment though re Will Skelton: “ Is he a lineout jumper? No. But the lineout starts on the ground – contact work, lifting, utilising that massive body at the maul.” Geoff is spot on about the work Will does on the ground. But I would contest the view that he is not a lineout jumper. I think I have commented before on this one, so won’t go further than referring to the end of the last Cup Final in Dublin, LAR using Will on maybe 3 occasions at No 2 in the lineout. And I have seen him used by LAR in Top 14, and never seen him beaten to the catch…but in reality that would only be a total of 10 times max.
Go to commentsDaltons a great guy and can lead at any level with that humility
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